Monday, September 9, 2019

Wannabe Kidnappers
RoutedWritten by Robert
A. Waters

On November 8, 2017, the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s
Office released the following statement: “Four teens armed with a knife, guns
and a roll of tape planned to kidnap and rob members of a Baker family last
night, but their plot didn’t go as planned and now all four are in
custody.Inside their SUV deputies also
found latex gloves, facial masks and dark clothing.”

The town of Baker, with a population of around 7,000, sits
near the edge of Florida’s Panhandle.Located between the Blackwater River and the Yellow River, the area
offers a natural environment for those who favor country-style living.Terry Brackney resided near Baker with his
17-year-old daughter, Amber.The
51-year-old father owned a funeral home and clothing store in Crestview, ten
miles away.

At 10:30 P.M. on November 7, Amber drove home from her job at
a local restaurant.As she pulled up to
the gated entrance to her home, her headlights shone on four 55-gallon drum barrels
that blocked the road.Immediately
suspicious, Amber used her cell phone to inform her father.

Terry told her to drive around the barrels and Amber did just that.

When she arrived home, she briefly discussed the incident with
her father, then went to bed.

The sheriff’s statement described what happened next: “A short
time later [Terry] heard his dogs barking and saw his motion-activated flood
lights come on.After spotting some
individuals trying to force their way into his garage, he fired three shots and
the intruders fled into the woods.He
later learned they had unscrewed some of his security lights.”

Terry quickly called 9-1-1 and alerted the sheriff’s office.

While interviewing nearby homeowners, detectives got a
break.A neighbor had seen a suspicious
vehicle near her house.She described it
as a white 2016 Jeep Liberty.Deputies
spotted the SUV on Highway 4 and made a felony traffic stop.

They arrested Keilon Johnson, 19, Austin French, 17, Tyree
Johnson, 16, and Kamauri Horn, 15.While
none of the suspects had been struck by Terry’s gunfire, they were so terrified that they all quickly confessed to a sinister plot.

Keilon Johnson, the oldest suspect, set the plan in
motion.All the teens attended Crestview
High School with Amber and knew her.Keilon
had studied her movements and knew she returned home from work every night at the
same time.

Keilon convinced his cohorts that her father was wealthy and
kept lots of money in the home.They
came up with a plan to rob the house.When she came home after work, the gang planned to “make Amber Brackney
exit [her] vehicle at the barricade where she would be taken by force, made to
enter the gate code to enter the curtilage and coerce Terry Brackney to exit
the residence.Terry would then be subdued
by chemicals and/or force and the defendants would then enter the home and
commit the robbery.”

What went without saying is that, even wearing masks, there
was a good chance the conspirators would be recognized.In fact, Amber had once been close friends
with at least one of the suspects and could easily identify his voice and
mannerisms.Because of that, had their
plan succeeded, there was a good possibility the suspects would have murdered
Terry and Amber to keep them quiet.

As the attempted robbery played itself out that night, Ervin
Johnson drove the getaway vehicle and communicated with Kielon Johnson by cell
phone.Once Amber foiled their plan by
driving around the barricade, Kielon called Ervin and told him they were going “straight
for the house.”Austin French was armed
with a knife, while Keilon and Kamurai Horn had pistols.

As they began to unscrew the lights, their plan went
awry.The dogs began barking and Terry
came out of the house with his semiautomatic handgun.When he opened fire, the suspects panicked
and fled into the dense woods surrounding the house. While making their escape, they dropped one of the firearms,
the knife, and other identifying items.

The conspirators, each charged as adults, pleaded guilty to attempted
armed kidnapping and attempted home invasion.Horn received 15 years in prison.Ervin Johnson was sentenced to seven years, followed by fifteen years of
probation.Keilon Johnson has not yet
been sentenced but faces up to 45 years in prison, while Austin French is also
looking at a possible 45 years.

Terry and Amber Brackney appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning
America” to discuss the crime and its aftermath.

“I’ve searched and I’ve prayed for peace of mind over this
situation and to get my sense of security back in my home,” Terry said.“Had these individuals made it inside our
house…today would have probably been our funerals.”

“I’m really grateful for my dad,” Amber said.“I really don’t have a mom in my life, so my
dad is my hero…I saw these kids every day walking down the hallway [in my
school].I never expected them to try to
kidnap me and harm me and do such a thing to my family.”

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

The
Hurricane that Sank Spain

by Robert A. Waters

On the white-hot afternoon of July 24, 1715, a Spanish flotilla
of eleven ships sailed out of Havana.A small
French warship, the Grifon, tagged along.General Juan Esteban de Ubilla commanded six
of the Spanish vessels while General Don Antonio de Echeverz y Zubiza was in charge
of the remaining ships.Bound for Spain,
the fleet carried nearly a thousand crew members and passengers, as well as a
staggering 14 million pesos worth of treasure.Much of the plunder, taken from Mexico and South America, consisted of
gold and silver coinage and bars.

General Ubilla was furious that it had taken two months longer
than usual to transport the vast treasure from the mines to the ships.He knew the chances of encountering a
hurricane had increased dramatically.For
50 years, Spanish treasure galleons had made the passage across the Atlantic, and
dozens had been lost to the dreaded storms.

Spain’s life’s-blood depended on the success of these
ships.According to Robert F. Burgess
and Carl J. Clausen in their book, Florida’s Golden Galleons, “Spain’s
economy was almost totally dependent on these treasure shipments from the New
World.Since she manufactured nothing
that was needed by other countries, the wealth received from her New World
colonies merely passed through her economy into the economies of other European
nations…”(In 1712, the country had
finally ended the costly 13-year War of the Spanish Succession, another of the
endless conflicts Spain fought that kept its treasury drained.)

The treasure ships, six in all and crucial to the financial
stability of the nation, were stuffed with produce, meat, and all manner of
cargo, as well as the treasure chests.The rest were warships, tasked with beating off pirates or privateers.Cannons lined their decks, making the ships an
overloaded yet dangerous foe.

After passing Punto Ycaco, an island near the outer edge of Cuba,
the majestic armada headed north.They
would hug the Florida coast until they reached San Augustin when they would
turn east.With flags flying in the
breeze, none of those aboard knew a hurricane was headed straight toward them.

On July 29, sailors began to notice that the sea in the
distance looked like lead.A gray, milky
haze obscured the sun as the fleet, one by one, sailed between the Florida
coastline and the Bahama islands.General
Ubilla and General Echerverz, already nervous, had become alarmed at the signs
of bad weather.

Burgess and Clausen described the following day: “On Tuesday,
July 20, dawn broke on an oppressively hot, humid day.People’s hands felt clammy; their clothes
stuck to their bodies.The fleet had
made little progress during the night.Winds were erratic, often changing directions, sometimes ceasing to blow
at all.”Swells increased, causing the
ships to roll and pitch.By noon,
everyone on board sensed what was coming.

Soon the afternoon sky had turned so black sailors lit
lanterns so they could see.Winds more
than 100 miles per hour lashed the fleet.As the ships were tossed about, children cried and strong men
prayed.The flotilla, so magnificent
when it had left Cuba, became uncontrollable.Cargo shifted dangerously on the ships as the pitching and rolling
increased.A survivor later said that
“the sea came like arrows.”Torrents of
rain, shrieking winds, and waves higher than the ships themselves pummeled the
fleet.

Near midnight, the fury of the storm increased.Ships plunged down into the dark depths, then
struggled up again.Over and over and
over.Trunks, cargo, cattle, horses,
even the big guns on the warships, ricocheted across the decks.Back and forth they went.The ships moaned as if dying, then let out
ear-splitting booms as if the cannons had been fired.

Stuck between the Florida coast and the Bahamas, the fleet
could not escape.The boats wallowed,
becoming waterlogged and weary.Sailors,
having worked in life-or-death desperation for twenty-four hours, were exhausted.The unending storm, which seemed determined
to punish the ships, only increased in its fury.

Finally, the once-proud flotilla could take no more.

The first to go was the Capitana, a 471-ton ship.Its bottom was sheared off when it struck a
reef.The ship sank almost
immediately.General Ubilla, along with
200 sailors, drowned.One by one, the
other ships followed.Sailors and
passengers died as each ship plunged into the seas.General Echeverz’s flagship, the Nuestra
Senora del Carmen, dumped enough cargo to lighten its load and limp onto
the Florida shore.The general and most
of his men survived.

Only the French ship that had been forced by the Spanish into
becoming part of the flotilla (Ubilla and Echeverz didn’t want the captain of
the Grifon to warn others that a flotilla loaded with treasure was
coming across the sea) escaped because it had pulled far enough away from the
Spanish fleet to miss the storm.

Much of the wrecked flotilla came to rest a few hundred yards off
the shore of what is now Cape Canaveral. More than seven hundred souls perished in the
storm, and all the Spanish treasure was lost.Dazed survivors launched longboats to San Augustin to inform officials
of the disaster.In time, the survivors
were rescued and some of the treasure salvaged.The following letter describing the hurricane was written by a survivor: "The sun disappeared and the wind increased in velocity coming from the east and the east northeast. The seas became very giant in size, the wind continued blowing us toward shore, pushing us into the shallow water. It soon happened that we were unable to use any sail at all...and we were at the mercy of the wind and water, always driven closer to shore. Having lost all our masts, all of the ships were wrecked..."The wreck of the 1715 flotilla was a disaster for the Spanish
government.During that year, Austria expropriated
the Netherlands from Spain, which had little money left to finance another
war.As the British and other European
nations became stronger, Spain’s influence and power dwindled.

Storms continued to wreak havoc on the Spanish.In 1733, a flotilla of 21 treasure ships was
decimated by a hurricane near Key West.

In the 1950s and 1960s, treasure hunters located the 1715
flotilla and recovered treasure worth millions of dollars.

NOTE: Much of the information in this story came from Florida’s
Golden Galleons: The Search for the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet by Robert
F. Burgess and Carl J. Clausen.If you
have any interest in the subject, I highly recommend this book.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

The
Blackwater River flows through the wilds of Alabama into Florida’s
Panhandle.Its ink-black water meanders
along, lapping sugar-white sand beaches while centuries-old cypress trees line
the banks.

On May 1,
1956, three young boys played along the water’s edge.They were David Earl Wilson, 7, his younger
brother Douglas Cecil, 4, and a friend, seven-year-old Michael McCauley.The Wilson family’s mobile house trailer sat
back on a hill, looking down over the shirtless boys as they yelled and romped.

The
playmates parted as their neighbor, thirty-three-year-old Dallas E. Withers,
approached a motorboat tethered to a nearby tree.While climbing in, the unemployed electrician
turned to the boys and asked, “You want to go for a short ride?”

The
excited youngsters hesitated briefly, then crowded into the boat.But McCauley, fearful that his father would
be angry, jumped out and waded back to shore.

A sudden
roar of the engine alerted Mary Alice Wilson, the brothers’ mother.She sprinted from the house down to the
river’s bank, screaming for her neighbor to return with her boys.Withers never looked back.The distraught woman watched in horror as the
boat motored into the fog and disappeared around a bend.

Since she
didn’t have a telephone, Mrs. Wilson rushed to a neighbor’s home and called the
Bay County Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff
M. J. “Doc” Daffin and his lead investigator, Floyd D. Saxon, raced to the
residence at 414 Second Court in Millville.The unincorporated community sat on a spit of land between Watson Bayou
and St. Andrews Bay in Panama City.After Mrs. Wilson and Michael McCauley breathlessly described the events
of the afternoon, Daffin quickly organized teams of deputies to search the
shoreline.

News of
the abduction spread quickly.With a
population of around 50,000 residents, Bay County was home to several military installations,
including Tyndall Air Force Base.In
addition to law enforcement officials, local fishermen and servicemen soon
joined the hunt for the missing brothers.

*******

Three
hours after casting off with the youngsters, Withers docked his boat at Polecat
Bayou, fifteen miles from the Wilson home.

He was
alone.

Waiting
deputies arrested him on the spot.

Lawmen
transported Withers to an undisclosed jail for his own safety.Weather-hard, with dark eyes, the suspect
said little.When asked where the boys
were, he feigned surprise and denied taking them.

Darkness
fell, and the long night passed with no word from the missing brothers.The next morning, Mrs. Wilson, sobbing,
released a tape-recorded statement: “Please, Mr. Withers,” she said, “Tell me
where you left my sons.I want them back
dead or alive.”The Fort Pierce News
Tribune reported that “the boys’ father, Willard E. Wilson, was taken to a
veteran’s hospital in Birmingham for treatment of shock.”

The
Wilson family had lived in Panama City for only three weeks.Originally from Mississippi, Willard worked
as a civilian employee at Tyndall Air Force Base.

Shortly
after noon, searchers in a military helicopter spotted four-year-old
Douglas.

Floating face-down in the murky
waters, his remains were located about 300 yards from the mouth of Cook’s
Bayou.Lawmen grimly pulled Douglas from
the river and transported him to Smith Funeral Home in Panama City.Soon the coroner arrived.After conducting an autopsy, he announced the
cause of death was drowning.

Though
searchers combed the river all day, David was not found.

On the
second day, after hearing Mrs. Wilson’s taped appeal and learning that Douglas
had been found, Withers confessed to killing the boys.Sheriff Daffin told reporters that in his
first confession, Withers claimed that while making a sharp turn around a bend,
David fell out of the boat.Withers
stated that after David drowned, he panicked and tossed Douglas into the water.

The next
day Withers admitted his sordid reason for the abduction and murders.He informed investigators that he had
molested young boys for years, but had never been caught.When he saw the children playing on the bank
outside their home, he immediately felt drawn to the older Wilson boy.

Withers
stated that after finding an isolated spot, he forced David to commit “indecent
acts.”He described how he flung the
child into the dark water and watched him flounder until he slowly sank out of
sight.The boy had cried out just before
disappearing.Detectives noted that
Withers was matter-of-fact when describing what happened.In order to cover his crime, the killer said
he also tossed four-year-old Douglas into the river.Like David, the youngster quickly drowned.

Investigators
believed Withers had stopped at a sand-bank to molest David, though for some
reason he never admitted it.Tracks on
one of the sandbars in the river contained footprints of a man and two young
children.After the assault, Withers
likely forced the brothers back into the boat and tossed them out.

For the
next three days, hundreds of searchers scoured the river and its banks for the older
boy.During this time, women of the
community grouped together in local churches to make sandwiches and iced tea
for the men.Finally, four days after
having been snatched from the shoreline in broad daylight, two local fishermen
radioed that they had located the remains of a young boy.

David’s
body had floated up only a few feet from where his brother had been found.

**********

Dallas
Withers had spent time in a reform school before joining the U. S. Army in
1943.

Trained
as a machine gunner, Withers was assigned to Company D, 304th
Infantry Regiment, 76th Infantry Division.As he spoke to investigators, the suspect
made a shocking claim.He stated that in
1945, during a night bombardment near Oberinheim, Germany, while supporting a
squad of riflemen from the rear, he lowered his machine gun and turned it on
his fellow GIs.

He
informed detectives that he and another soldier were having “sexual relations,”
and he was afraid of being found out.Withers said casualties from the enemy bombardment were so horrific that
no one realized some soldiers had been shot from behind.

Sheriff
Daffin reported that Withers passed a lie detector test about the episode.However, Detective Saxon told reporters that
he didn’t believe the suspect’s claims.(The army never fully investigated the incident, evidently writing the
“confession” off as an attention-seeking ploy—or perhaps they were unwilling to
open up a can of worms that could destroy many lives.)

Sheriff
Daffin told reporters that Withers “showed absolutely no remorse or emotion in
answering my questions.He is a man
without a heart.”

At ten
o’clock on the morning of May 7, hundreds of mourners attended funeral services
for Douglas and David Wilson.A local
newspaper reported that after the services in Panama City, “the two were taken
to Louisville, Miss., by a [Smith Funeral Home] hearse for services at the
Middleton Methodist Church there.”

***********

The trial
of Dallas E. Withers, scheduled for January 7, 1959, promised to be a sensation.It did not disappoint.

The
Panama City courtroom was packed to capacity with 250 spectators.Willard and Mary Alice Wilson sat behind
prosecutors while Withers’ aged mother took a seat behind her son and the
defense team.(His wife and seven
children were nowhere to be seen.)

Thomas
Beasley, a former state representative from DeFuniak Springs, represented
Withers.(He was known for having tried
30 death penalty cases in which not one of his defendants was sent to the
chair.)But in this case, the attorney
had little to work with.Withers had
confessed twice.In addition, witnesses
had seen him leave with the children.Finally, physical evidence found in his boat proved the brothers had
been there.

At first,
Beasley made a half-hearted attempt to show that Withers was insane.But the defendant’s obvious planning and
confessions shot down that argument.

Beasley
then claimed that Withers had been “drunk and unaccountable” for his
actions.But while he had been
drinking, witnesses testified that he was not drunk.(An appeals court later wrote that “there was
ample competent substantial evidence to support the jury’s conclusion that
Withers was not so intoxicated at the time of the commission of the crime as to
be incapable of premeditation.”)

Finally,
in desperation, the defense argued that Withers had suffered a work-related
accident that may have damaged his brain and made him impulsive.This could have caused him to “snap” and
perform an act he couldn’t control.

Prosecutor
J. Frank Adams told jurors that the crime Withers committed was the worst ever
recorded in Bay County.He stated that
it was obvious from his confession that Withers knew right from wrong.

Four
hours after receiving instructions, jurors returned with their verdict.

Monday, August 5, 2019

Foster Coker III, his wife, Pam, and their seven-year-old grandson
survived a shock attack inside their home.The Jacksonville, Florida family were innocent victims targeted by a
gang of felons that called themselves the “Cutthroat Committee.”Both Foster and Pam suffered permanent
injuries in the assault and their grandson was forced to live with the trauma.There is one reason the family is still alive
and that is because they were able to get their guns and finally dispatch
the assailant.

After the home invasion, Foster wrote his thoughts about gun
control.Here is the article:

“On August 15, 2014, my wife, Pamela Howell Coker, my grandson,
and I were targeted in a ruthless home invasion.Four people took part in the planning and
execution of the cowardly crime, including three convicted felons.

“They came up with their plan while driving ar0und the night
before in a stolen car.There is a law
against driving around in a stolen car, but they ignored it.

“During this planning session, certain drugs were
consumed.There is a law against using
these drugs, but they ignored it.

“When it came time to invade our home, they jumped the privacy
fence into our back yard.There is a law
against trespassing, but they ignored it.

“One of the criminals proceeded to kick in our back door and
enter our home.There is a law against
doing this, but he ignored it.

“This criminal was armed with a stolen handgun.There is a law against possessing stolen
property, but he ignored it.

“The criminal, as mentioned, was already a convicted
felon.There is a law against convicted
criminals possessing firearms, but he ignored it.

“Once inside, the criminal attacked my wife, knocking her down
on a hardwood floor and causing severe injuries.There is a law against physically attacking
people, but he ignored it.

“When I came to my wife’s defense, the criminal repeatedly
pistol-whipped me.There is a law
against assaulting someone with a deadly weapon, but he ignored it.

“Because of our Second Amendment rights, my wife and I were
able to arm ourselves.This resulted in
an exchange of gunfire with the criminal.His bullet grazed my head and came within an inch or two of killing
me.There is a law against trying to
murder someone, but he ignored it.

“So don’t tell me how some new gun law is going to make anyone
safer.Laws affect only one part of the
population…law-abiding citizens.Criminals, by their very definition, ignore any and all laws as they see
fit.

“Limiting the kinds of weapons or ammunition the general
public can implement in the defense of their own lives from criminal trash like
the ones we had to deal with only helps make the criminals’ tasks easier.”

Saturday, August 3, 2019

Guns
and Self-Defense: 23 Inspirational True Crime Stories of Survival with Firearms is a new book by Robert A. Waters and Sim Waters. The
authors describe 23 cases involving ordinary citizens who used their defensive
firearms to survive criminal attacks. As the authors point out, these
self-defense success stories are rarely covered by the national media because
they don’t fit the media’s bias.

Besides reading 23 stories in which the bad guys lose, defensive shooters can
pick up some pointers by carefully studying each story. One of the
learning points that immediately caught my attention was the number of home
invasion cases where the victims had to run to other parts of the house to
retrieve their firearm. Several of these folks sustained serious injuries
before they could arm themselves and fight back. It makes a good case for
keeping the firearm on your person while at home or possibly having a gun
stashed in every room. Because the home invasion is usually quite dynamic
and very violent, the citizen may not have time to wander off into another room
and collect that defensive firearm.

On the other hand, there are several cases of citizens being alert enough to
suspect trouble and take appropriate action while there was still time. These
examples make it clear that, whether we are in our homes, place of business or
out on the street, being alert is a key factor in surviving a criminal attack.

I also found it interesting to read about one of the attacks being survived by
proper deployment of a .410-bore revolver. These guns have become fairly
popular, and I have been curious about their use in defeating a criminal
attack.

Another obvious fact is that the attack can occur anywhere, at home, at work or
on the street. One victim had pulled into her own driveway, getting home
after work, when confronted. Because she was alert to suspicious activity
around her, she prevailed and survived.

Robert A. Waters is the author of five books that cover citizen’s use of
defensive firearms to defeat criminals. This is the first book, however,
that includes his son, Sim Waters, as co-author. Guns and Self-Defense can be ordered from Amazon or www.robertwaters.net. I have found that Waters’ books are interesting reading
as well as being a good study guide for the armed citizen. I will be using
some of these incidents as training illustrations in a team-tactics class that
I am sponsoring at Gunsite Academy in
spring 2020.

On December 13, 1938, nineteen-year-old Margaret Martin received
a phone call from a stranger.He said he
needed a stenographer for an insurance company he was starting and offered her
the job.Margaret, a recent graduate from
Wilkes-Barre Business College, agreed to meet him in downtown Kingston,
Pennsylvania.Jobs were tough to come by
in the Depression, so she seemed downright giddy as she left home.But within hours, Margaret was dead, having
been kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered.The Pennsylvania Motor Patrol took charge of the investigation but never
developed any real leads.The crime is
still unsolved.

On March 28, 1940, seventeen-year-old Rachel Taylor
disembarked from a Greyhound bus to return to her dorm at Pennsylvania State
College (now Pennsylvania State University).It was a cold, raw night with drizzling rain and few people about.Rachel
never made her destination.Her body was
found the next morning, battered to death.Again, the Pennsylvania Motor Police investigated.

Both cases received extensive coverage by local and state media
even though college administrators, fearful of a drop in enrollment, did their
best to hush up the Taylor murder.The
parents of both girls, eager for justice to be served, continued hounding
police for years.In the end, however, neither
case was solved.

Nittany Nightmare
describes the futile search for the killer (or killers) of Martin and Taylor.Over the next few years, additional rapes and
murders plagued the area and taxed the
capacity of detectives. Most would
remain unsolved.Police suspected one
killer may have committed all the crimes.

Set among the backdrop of Penn State football, state politics,
and a then-backward law enforcement agency that later became the renowned
Pennsylvania State Police, Sherwood’s tale includes many strange characters and
weird circumstances.It is at once a
local history of Happy Valley and its surroundings, a compendium of the growth
of Penn State football into the dynamic team it became, and a grouping of strange
true crime mysteries.Some readers may
wonder how these disparate entities became entwined in one volume, but believe
me, it works.

Before the term serial killer was coined, before DNA, before
surveillance video and modern crime-solving techniques, investigators struggled
to identify the man they suspected was a lone phantom killer.

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Book review by Dr. Michael S. BrownSitting in a place of honor on my
bookshelf is a copy of The Best Defense,
written by Robert Waters in 1998. This classic describes fourteen cases where
ordinary citizens used guns to save their lives from violent attackers. I’ve
kept it around as a reminder to stay vigilant and to occasionally loan to
friends who don’t think guns are ever used for self-defense.

Waters’ new book is Guns and Self-Defense,
which he co-wrote with his son Sim Waters, who has a degree in criminology.
This time, he chronicles twenty-three dramatic tales of armed self-defense.

Like the now nearly extinct crime
reporters of the newspaper era, he combines information from police reports and
court records with victim interviews to tell the entire story in an engaging
short form. He always lists the types of guns involved, how many shots were
fired, how many scored hits and even where misses ended up.

Unlike the mainstream media I often
ridicule, Waters is not a prisoner of the 24-hour news cycle. The information
he collects, sometimes several years after the fact, has had plenty of time to
crystallize into an accurate record that includes trial results, prison terms
and the lasting effects on victims.

Waters does not have to add the drama.
The stories are so intense that he can stick to a matter-of-fact style and you
will still find yourself obsessively flipping the pages.

Only one of these twenty-three incidents
made it to the national media, it was one of two in the book that involved
armed citizens coming to the aid of police officers who were being beaten to
death by a crazed criminal.

Looking at the other twenty-one stories,
it’s easy to see patterns that might be of use to the average citizen
contemplating self-defense or to those involved in the gun control debate.

Almost all of these attacks on unsuspecting
people involved substance abuse in some way. Either the attackers
were flying high on drugs like alcohol, cocaine and meth, or they were
trying to get money to buy drugs.

Criminals can be extremely vicious and care nothing
about the damage they inflict on others. Many of the victims
suffered life-altering injuries as well as lasting emotional trauma.

Violent criminals, much like predators in the animal
world, prefer easy prey. Most of these victims were women, elderly
or physically handicapped people at home. The few who were not
tended to work in convenience stores or high value targets like stores
dealing in jewels and precious metals.

All guns involved were handguns, except for a shotgun
wielded by a woman home alone.

Many of the handguns used for effective defense were
cheap weapons that are accessible to low wage earners and have sometimes
been targets of gun control efforts.

Since most of the assailants were drug-enhanced and
were only shot with handguns, they often had to be shot more than
once. So if you have time, reach for a long gun.

Few of the defenders had much training, if any. Yet
they all survived, and did not shoot any innocent bystanders.

None of the guns used for defense were locked up. Due
to the speed, shock and ferocity of the attacks, the victims would have
been unable to deal with locks.

Violent predators often work together in armed gangs
that may require defenders to fire many shots to end the attack.

All but one of the attackers had a long criminal
history marked by repeated prison terms with early release. Some
were on parole or on bail awaiting trial at the time.

The underlying explanation for these violent assaults
is that society does not deal effectively with the three main
causes: drugs, gangs and mental illness.

Criminals choose the time and place of their attack
both to achieve surprise and avoid law enforcement, so prudent citizens
must be prepared to defend themselves anytime, anywhere.

Anyone who is interested in keeping a
gun for protection would do well to read this book while keeping some things in
mind.

The commonly accepted theory is that
most criminals will flee at the sight of a gun, but Waters understandably
selected only incidents in which victims actually shot their attackers and
lived through the experience. While this doesn’t give a statistically accurate
picture, it serves as an excellent reminder that you had better be mentally
prepared in advance to shoot to save yourself and your loved ones. Just
displaying a gun is not always enough.

Another thought is that criminals who
actually need to be shot are likely the most unhinged and violent examples of
the species and will probably need to be shot more than once. Some of the
most dangerous hunt in packs. Owning a gun with a large magazine seems like a
common sense choice and owning more than one if you can afford it is probably a
good idea.

It almost goes without saying that you
should make a household emergency plan, practice with your firearm(s) and seek
training as possible.

After reading Guns and
Self-Defense, the wise reader will likely wonder why compelling and
inspiring stories like this so rarely make it into the national news stream. I
believe they are suppressed because they belie the standard media narrative
that ordinary people have no need for defensive firearms.

Why else would such riveting, life-and-death
dramas be ignored? Almost any of them could be easily turned into a profitable
made-for-TV movie or at least a 60 Minutes segment if our media
were not so biased and agenda-driven.

After reading this book, I discovered
another in this series published just a few months earlier titled: Guns Save Lives that
includes 22 events. If you follow defensive gun use news on the internet,
you know there is an inexhaustible supply of such stories.

Dr. Michael S. Brown is a pragmatic
Libertarian environmentalist who has been studying the gun debate for three
decades and considers it a fascinating way to learn about human nature and
politics.

This article originally appeared at drgo.us
and is reprinted here with permission.

Monday, July 15, 2019

It’s a crapshoot, a dilemma for many store clerks.Should I arm myself even though my employer insists
his store must be a gun-free zone?

That decision can mean life or death.The New York Times once wrote that convenience store clerks have the second most dangerous job in America (behind cab drivers). Every day proves the Times right.

Last month in Houston, Se Young Lee complied with three masked
robbers who targeted the ExxonMobil gas station and convenience store where he
worked.Lee opened the cash register so
they could take the money, then held his hands in the air.They murdered him anyway.

Trisha Stull, clerk at a Sunhouse food mart in Conway, Texas, handed
over the day’s receipts to three robbers.As they left the store, one robber turned and shot her dead.Just three weeks before, the gang had
murdered another compliant store clerk, Bala Parachuri.

In Kelso, Washington, Kayla Chapman died during a late-night
robbery at Holt’s Quik Chek.Even though
she gave cash and cigarettes to the robbers, it didn’t stop them from gunning
her down.

The following case might have ended the same way.

While working the graveyard shift in a Portland, Orgeon Plaid
Pantry [convenience store], Kristopher Follis made a decision that cost him his
job.A robber, his face covered, entered
and pulled a hatchet from his pocket.After the assailant demanded money, Follis, a concealed carry permit holder, retrieved his handgun.Holding the firearm in the air, Follis demanded that the robber get on
his knees and wait for police.The thief
laid his weapon on the counter, apologized, then fled.

Although no shots were fired, Follis was quickly terminated.

Most chain convenience stores have policies against keeping
firearms on the premises.The Oregonian
newspaper reported that Plaid Pantry CEO Jonathan Polonsky said in a statement
that ‘in the event a robbery does occur, the focus shifts entirely to non-resistance,
cooperation, and violence avoidance for the safety of our employees and
customers.’”

In other words, the CEO wants his frontline employees to take
a chance they won’t be assaulted or murdered.As stated above, it’s a crapshoot, with clerks being caught in the
crosshairs of company policy or common sense.

Follis told reporters he hated losing his job.But he added, “I would rather get fired over
something like that than possibly be in the hospital dying.”

Thousands of compliant clerks have been murdered by ruthless
killers.Here are two examples from my
blog:Linda Raulerson, a Lake City, Florida clerk at Joy American
Foods, handed over the cash register tray to an armed robber, then was shot to
death.Video surveillance showed that she
complied and offered no resistance.Her
killer has never been caught.

Lee Ann Larmon, working the graveyard shift at the Presto
convenience store in Hernando County, Florida, was kidnapped, raped, tortured, and
murdered by two losers, Todd Mendyk and Phillip Frantz.

Sunday, June 30, 2019

Dial 9-1-1 and Wait...by Robert A. Waters

It's 2:20 A. M., on April 22, 2019. A 38-year-old homeowner dials
the King County, Washington emergency services. The resident, never identified
by cops, has called to report that someone broke out a window and entered his home.
He tells the dispatcher he’s hiding in his upstairs bedroom closet with a handgun.
During much of the conversation, the terrified homeowner speaks in a
near-whisper. In the background, loud crashing noises can be heard as the
intruder overturns furniture and empties drawers.

The call lasts for 12 minutes. During that time, the
dispatcher continually assures the resident that officers will be there soon. At
the four-minute mark, as officers are “still on their way,” a barrage of gunfire
is heard. The following is a partial transcript of the call.Dispatcher: 9-1-1. What are you reporting?

Dispatcher: Do you have any further description on…(inaudible),
correct?

Homeowner: I don’t.

Dispatcher: What color is your house?

Homeowner: It’s green.

Dispatcher: How many stories?

Homeowner: Two.

(The homeowner seems to be getting more nervous as the
crashing sounds move closer. His breathing seems shallower, and his voice is
close to a whisper.)

Dispatcher: Okay. How many vehicles should be in
front?

Homeowner: I don’t know. I…

Dispatcher: Okay. What’s the color of your vehicle?

Homeowner: It’s a red truck.

Dispatcher: Okay. You have any other vehicles there,
right?

Homeowner: Hyundai. Silver Hyundai.

Dispatcher: Okay. You’re sure there’s no other
vehicles there, right?

Homeowner: (Inaudible.) Silver Hyundai.

Dispatcher: Bear with me. Got officers on the way.
Okay? Do you live with anyone else?

Homeowner: No. I’m by myself.

(Crashing sounds are getting much closer.)

Dispatcher: Are you able…Do they know you’re there?

Homeowner: (Whispering. Unintelligible.)

Dispatcher: Okay. Stay quiet, okay? Keep yourself
safe.

(All is silent for more than 30 seconds, except for the dispatcher
typing and the crashing sounds. Officers still have not arrived after nearly three
minutes. The homeowner seems reluctant to speak as he senses the intruder
getting closer.)

Dispatcher: (Inaudible…) Stay with me.

Homeowner: (Whispering.Inaudible.)

Dispatcher: He just broke out a window? (Pause.) Okay.
We’ve got officers on the way, okay? Can you tell how many people are there?

Homeowner: Two.

Dispatcher: Okay. Can you still hear them?

(Long pause.)

Dispatcher: Is your door locked?

(Silence.)

(Four minutes into the call, cops have not arrived.)

(Suddenly, five loud, echoing gunshots ring out. These are followed
by a moment of silence, then three more shots.)

Dispatcher: Oh my God!

(A man is moaning.)

Dispatcher: Can you hear me?

(For nearly two minutes the homeowner is silent. There are
moans. The dispatcher continues to try to contact the resident.)

Dispatcher: Can you hear me?

Homeowner: Where are you?

Dispatcher: Okay. We’ve got officers coming… What’s
going on? What happened? Hello… If you can hear me, I need you to talk to me. I
need to know what’s going on.

Homeowner: He came after me. I had to shoot him. I’m
hiding in my closet in the bedroom. Please hurry, I’m all alone…

The call lasts for another seven minutes as the dispatcher
and the homeowner sort out what happened.Later in the call, the resident is instructed on what to do when law
enforcement officers arrive. The homeowner is told to unload his gun and put it
in a safe place. He is told that when he hears police to go out the “west” (front)
door and let the officers see his hands. The resident agrees.

The suspect, identified as Joseph L. Anderson, died at the
scene of multiple gunshot wounds. No other suspects were found.

If you wish to read more exciting and inspiring
self-defense stories, buy my latest book, co-written with my son, Sim Waters. Guns and Self-Defense: 23 Inspiring True Crime Stories of Survival with Firearms
is available at Amazon.com. We used police reports, interviews with victims, court documents, media sources and other public records to accurately describe 23 chilling stories of armed self-defense.

Saturday, June 22, 2019

The Untold Story of Guns
by Robert A. Waters

Some stories can be judged as too gruesome to show on prime-time television—for instance, the horrifying scenes of desperate
people jumping from the Twin Towers on September 11.Or the ISIS beheadings a few years ago.Most American networks chose not to show
those disturbing scenes.

In other cases, the media will choose not to report stories that
go against the grain of a certain political narrative.Self-defense stories are a prime
example.Major media outlets rarely report
these cases, choosing instead to sensationalize mass shootings and the supposed
malfeasance of gun-owners.(Mass
shootings should be covered, but so should defensive stories.) Without a balanced approach to the news,
citizens may not have the information required to make rational decisions.

If there are any honest reporters still out there, here’s a
suggestion.

According to the FBI, there were 1.3 million home invasions
in 2018.Because homeowners are
generally inside their residences when these crimes occur, there is a high
potential for violence.So, how about an
investigative report on defensive actions that some residents take during home
invasions?

In the new book, Guns and Self-Defense: 23 Inspirational
True Stories of Survival with Firearms, the authors describe events that
took place on a freezing night in Highland, Illinois.Debi Keeney and Donna Carlyle lived in a
housing community for the elderly.The
sisters, both disabled, kept a tiny .22-caliber revolver near the couch where
they would watch television late into the night.When a violent ex-con broke into their home to
rob the sisters, he literally threw Debi across the room, severely injuring
her.He began to choke Donna, allowing Debi
time to grab her “derringer,” as she liked to call the gun.After firing a warning shot that the
assailant ignored, Debi shot Joshua Jewel.Without that gun, the sisters would likely have been murdered.(Both suffered life-threatening injuries
during the savage attack.)

Paralyzed for life from the shooting, Jewel was sentenced to
a long prison term.In her impact
statement to the court, Debi said, “Just thinking about [that night] makes my
hands shake and my eyes fill with tears, and I begin to relive seeing my sister
choked to death, and believing if I didn’t shoot, this man would kill her.Then came the horrible decision of having to
use my gun to protect my sister.He
forced me to make that decision, and it forever changed me.”

Like all of the stories in Guns and Self-Defense, there’s much more,
including the “story within in the story.”

Wouldn’t that be a great human-interest story?If you were a reporter, wouldn’t you find
that story compelling? The authors recount more than a half-dozen home invasion stories, each more
violent than the next.The one
consistent theme to all these cases is that the intended victims survived only because he or she had “protection,”
a firearm.

In addition to home invasions, our intrepid reporter might
also research invalids who defended themselves from attack, domestic violence
cases in which victims fought back and won, store robberies that went bad for
the assailant, and cases in which victims who had concealed carry permits survived.And there are more, including stories of cops
whose lives were saved by armed strangers.

In the mainstream press, self-defense stories have long gone
untold.It’s time for that to change.